The present invention relates generally to vehicles and, in particular, to a voice confirmation system and method for a vehicle. The system and method provide an acoustic confirmation of the execution and/or status of a command or inquiry initiated by a vehicle passenger.
As cars have been continuously updated to include new and useful features for the enjoyment and/or utility of a driver and his or her passengers, devices generally found in the home have made their way into cars as optional features. Such features include the television, the video cassette recorder (VCR), the compact disk (CD) player, and the digital video disk (DVD) player. While these features undoubtably provide enjoyment and/or utility to the driver and passengers of a vehicle, the features are nonetheless troublesome with respect to diverting driver attention. That is, upon initiating a command to a particular component or system, a user generally verifies that the command was received by visually inspecting a visual confirmation device. For example, upon actuating a button on a car radio to rewind an audio cassette tape contained therein, a user generally verifies that the button was indeed actuated by visually inspecting the display screen of the radio for the appearance of a rearward pointing arrow (i.e., ←) confirming the same. However, such actions performed to confirm the receipt, execution, and/or status of a user command and/or inquiry may divert the driver""s attention from the road and cause an accident.
Accordingly, there is a need for a voice conformation system and method for a vehicle.
The problems stated above, as well as other related problems of the prior art, are solved by the present invention, a voice confirmation system and method for a vehicle.
According to a first aspect of the invention, a method for providing voice confirmations corresponding to actions of passengers in a vehicle includes the step of detecting an action performed by an occupant of the vehicle. A corresponding voice confirmation is identified from among a plurality of pre-stored voice confirmations. The corresponding voice confirmation is audibly reproduced.
According to a second aspect of the invention, the reproducing step includes the step of synthesizing the corresponding voice confirmation.
According to a third aspect of the invention, the reproducing step includes the step of playing back a pre-recorded voice confirmation as representative of the corresponding voice confirmation.
According to a fourth aspect of the invention, the detecting step includes the step of monitoring at least one existing vehicle system to identify indicia corresponding to a plurality of possible vehicle occupant actions.
According to a fifth aspect of the invention, the detecting step further includes the step of comparing the identified indicia to pre-stored indicia corresponding to the plurality of possible vehicle occupant actions.
According to a sixth aspect of the invention, the detecting step further includes the step of determining whether the identified indicia match any of the pre-stored indicia.
According to a seventh aspect of the invention, the identifying step includes the step of comparing the detected action to a plurality of actions pre-stored in a table.
According to an eighth aspect of the invention, the identifying step further includes the step of determining whether the detected action matches any of a plurality of possible vehicle occupant actions.
These and other aspects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments, which is to be read in connection with the accompanying drawings.